Juggling It All

Today I want to talk about my personal mental and emotional struggles with trying to make this fabric business work and my nursing career. Those who know me well can tell you how I love being a nurse in the Operating Room. I find it extremely rewarding - it can be physically and emotionally extremely stressful and draining fighting for lives, sharing the most sacred and scary moments with my patients, and being their voice when they need me the most. I can talk about it for hours, but this is not what this post is about, I just want you to know that I love being an OR nurse. I also happen to be extremely lucky because I can do what I love and at the same time have the financial stability. I also love fabric and sewing, and quilting. I enjoy having my small business and bringing you my fabric finds :) 

When I first started BecksFabrics I was doing it on the side while still working sometimes very long hours in the operating room. I had hoped that eventually I would cut down on my nursing job to be able to concentrate more on BecksFabrics - exciting but at the same time scary move for me. After a year and a half of talking and thinking about it almost daily I decided to make that move seeing that BecksFabrics slowly was turning into a full time job itself. I decided to significantly cut down the hours of my nursing job and stick with the fabric store, but this is when all of a sudden I got offered a leadership position in the Operating Room, something I could only dream of and something that I had wanted for a few years ( before I decided to start the fabric store). 

I thought about this for a long time, I asked every person I knew for their opinion and the answer was practically screaming in my face - accept the job, somehow you will figure it all out, and so I did. Instead of cutting down my hours I found myself working more than full time hours, driving three times the distance one way, waking up very early and going to bed late because I could not and would not stop BecksFabrics. Most important out of all that was that I did not like my new job, yes it was a great move in the right direction for my nursing career no doubt, but it did not make me happy and everything around me suffered, including BecksFabrics.

One day rushing to yet another meeting I took a back hallway of the hospital and used the back stairwell to quickly get down instead of using the elevator. As I was running down those stairs a simple poster caught my eye. It was a black and white poster with just text on it and it said in big bold black letters "Do What You Love". There was nothing else on those walls, just that simple poster. I know we keep hearing all these quotes and it is all so simple, but that day it really stuck with me. I knew what I had to do, I have always known, but seeing that just confirmed what I had been thinking the whole time, and so I followed. I resigned from the job! It was not an easy step and a quick decision by any means, and I know that a lot of people, in fact probably the majority of them think that I made an irrational move. One of my close family members even made not a very nice comment how I was completely insane giving up a promising leadership position in the hospital for fabric. Perhaps in their eyes I did, but I can honestly tell you that from the moment I did that I felt free and happy. I went back to my old job, I significantly cut down my hours ( I do not want to completely give it up as I mentioned before I like being in the OR) and I can do what I love - run my fabric store!

I sincerely thank you all who stuck with me through those times, supported me and put up with delayed orders and other hiccups along the way - I could not have done it with you!

Julia